one smol step
With Mandy & I now focused full-time on web3, here's a peek at what's in store.
As of today, both Mandy and I are focusing our efforts full-time on smol farm and web3. Our recently announced partnership with Iron Chef Cat Cora demands a lot of care and attention, and we want to devote as much as we can to continuing to create cool things for the community that has sprung up around us after the success of Dastardly Ducks.
Forgoing traditional coding work is one smol step for me, but it’s one biiiiiiig step for all of us.
The Farm
Our initial efforts at fowl farming were small-scale. A half-dozen ducks gave us more eggs than we ever ate, and we complemented them with two Emden geese who help deter the hawks, raccoons, and other predators that might attack the literal “sitting ducks” otherwise.
We are in the process of scaling up to properly support several dozen ducks with a dedicated roost building, and will be documenting the process of raising a bunch of baby ducklings this spring.
To facilitate the sharing of IRL farm content, we will be reviving our old YouTube channel. Please subscribe to follow along with the progress on this front!
Dastardly Ducks
The Dastardly Ducks were what gave us not just the means to save the farm but opened up a lot of the doors we now have. Though we initially just sold the NFTs as a last-ditch fundraiser, we are in the process of turning them into a bigger world.
The initial focus will be a webcomic, an ensemble cast focused around Dan the Duck, an everyduck character who was Duck #0001 of the NFT collection. We are in the process of finding ways to bring duck merch into the real world — starting with free stickers for duck holders.
We are also brainstorming other ideas involving the ducks from other types of media like games to providing more web3-oriented utility. We will keep you posted as those whiteboard ideas start to become reality.
Yo Kitties
On Monday, we announced our partnership with Iron Chef Cat Cora to launch Yo Kitties, a collection of 5,000 cats in the style of Dastardly Ducks. We hope that this sister project of Dastardly Ducks will help bring more attention and desirability to the initial project.
We want to do more than just develop our farm further and help others, which is why we’re both going to donate money to Chefs for Humanity as well as setup a fund to help other, struggling small farms — we have had many reach out asking for help replicating our sort of success, and not everyone can make a successful NFT collection.
VTubing
For about the past year, I have streamed on Twitch as BB the Flying Fox, a fruit bat character that Mandy and I developed together, with her doing the art and Live2D rigging. In retrospect, this was perhaps our prototype foray into the metaverse, though I, simply inspired by the rise of the VTuber phenomenon, wanted to dip my toes in.
Though I’ve never attracted a huge Twitch following, I do have Affiliate status and have enjoyed playing things like Final Fantasy and farming sims in a fun, social manner. Mandy wants to get more involved in my streams as well, and may finally debut a VTuber character of her own.
Indie Games & More
Mandy and I have tinkered around with early stage prototypes of indie games we would like to release at some point. I have a few novel manuscripts I might polish up and just get out by way of web3. We have interesting collaboration opportunities we cannot yet reveal.
So much has changed for us here at smol farm in just a matter of a few weeks. Though we may find, at some point down the road, that this project is not enough to sustain our financial needs, we want to make cool things that both we and our friends, followers, and fans love.
tl;dr
Subscribe to this Substack for smol farm updates & insights about web3
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for upcoming IRL farm content
Follow Dastardly Ducks and Yo Kitties on Twitter our cute NFT world
Follow BB the Flying Fox on Twitch for game streaming